​Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office didn't just commit racial profiling of Latinos, according to the findings of the U.S. Department of Justice's investigation. Rather, Arpaio oversaw the worst pattern of racial profiling by a law enforcement agency in U.S. history, a DOJ expert concluded.

Arpaio and his commanders created a "culture" of abusing the rights of Latinos in the county, assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Perez told reporters in a news conference today.

The findings were a vindication of allegations by critics and profiling victims, despite the lack of punitive measures taken against Arpaio for knowingly creating this "culture of bias."

Some of damning findings in a report put out by the department today (you can find the entire document below) include:

* A study commissioned by the Justice Department found that "Latino drivers are four-to-nine times more likely to be stopped than similarly situated non-Latino drivers."

* A fifth of all the immigration-sweep traffic stops violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizures.

* Arpaio's anti-immigration squads responded repeatedly with enforcement patrols to complaints about people with "dark skin" or Spanish speakers.

* Jail guards punished Spanish-speaking inmates for failing to understand their commands in English, sometimes putting them in solitary confinement for that reason.

* Jail guards refused to accept grievance forms and "tank orders," which allow inmates to request basic daily services, that are written in Spanish.

* Guards pressured Latino inmates to sign voluntary deportation forms. (That allegation helped lead to today's announcement by Homeland Security that the 287(g)cross-training program was being taken out of the jails.

* Arpaio's office retaliated against its critics by subjecting them to "retaliatory detentions and arrests without cause, unfounded civil lawsuits, and other baseless complaints."

After the Justice Department informed Arpaio about the probe in March, 2009, the Sheriff's Office refused to cooperate. It took a lawsuit and court order to get Arpaio to budge.

Hundreds of people were interviewed, thousands of documents were reviewed, and the county's jails were inspected in the Justice Department probe. Investigators discovered a "widespread pattern or practice of law enforcement and jail activities that discriminate against Latinos." The "typical characteristic" of the sheriff's Human Smuggling Unit is one of prejudicial harassment "rather than the effective enforcement of immigration law," the DOJ report says.

Witness accounts of racial profiling were found to be consistent with the accusations against deputies. Two examples are given:

* A legal U.S. resident who allegedly failed to use his turn signal was made to sit on a curb for 15 minutes, then arrested and jailed for 13 days on a bogus charge that was dismissed in court.

* A legal U.S. resident and his U.S. citizen son invited deputies into their home during a raid on a suspect drop-house next door. The deputies proceeded to search the home without consent or a warrant, handcuffed the man and his son, then had them sit on the sidewalk next to the people being busted from the neighboring house. They were detained for an hour before being released without any citation.

The Justice Department says it gathered "many" similar examples. That's no surprise to close observers of the MCSO. We reported back in 2009, for instance, how one deputy enjoyed busting illegal immigrants for seat-belt violations that weren't really violations.

The way Arpaio and his deputies responded to bigoted complaints was another sign to the DOJ that racial discrimination was rampant in the office.

The Justice Department noted one time when Arpaio told his enforcement chief to check into a report that employees at a Sun City McDonald's were speaking Spanish. Another time, Arpaio thanked a racist letter-writer for his concern about illegal immigrants in Mesa. He forwarded the letter to Deputy Chief Brian Sands, who "later testified that he assumed that the letter's author correlated undocumented persons with 'dark-complected' people."

A sweep of Mesa soon ensued.

The latter examples show clearly that Arpaio personally oversees and directs some of the discriminatory behavior. Previous probes into allegations of abuse of power and unethical behavior in his office have concluded that Arpaio is a micro-manager of high-profile MCSO probes -- those that get him headlines. Yet when pressed for accountability, Arpaio's m.o.is to cast blame elsewhere, claiming he's far removed from the details of his operations.

Arpaio had a news conference at 4 p.m. today on the Justice Department's findings. Read what happened there here.

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Have you noted the date of this story originally being published? The date of the story is 15 Dec 2011. Ray Stern wrote the original article, but it seems that we have to ask why is this story being represented when the elections are just a couple of months away. Apparently it was purposefully placed in the middle of a story so that people would not realize that it was not a 2014 article but went back nearly 3 years. Remember that Hillary and her staff maintained that since Benghazi activities were two years old, "who cares" about what happened then, or even that it was years ago according to the WH paid propagandist.

The USA DOJ, now there is an organization that is impartial and supports the laws of the land. OBTW, Eric Holder the organization head is openly being considered for impeachment by congress for not enforcing laws or worse yet choosing which laws he and his org will enforce. among the laws he is choosing to not enforce is border and immigration security since for some reason the administration wants the southern border to become a pathway for people entering the USA illegally. So far border patrol agents have repeated capturing people from many middle eastern countries, people from mexico, and people from central america. The border patrol representative openly questioned how many terrorists have entered the USA this way because of the federal program of AZ/TX states catch and federals release gang members, terrorists, people reported as youths but are 60% adults, and people responding to Obama administration propaganda to come to the USA and get better benefits than the American citizens whose benefit money was cut to pay for the lifestyle of the illegal aliens.

According to the assistant attorney general who was a guest on the kelly file, the DOJ had 44 investigators in ferguson, MO but none in the community where ISIS was openly recruiting people for going overseas and fighting for ISIS with several people having gone overseas by the time the interview took place. OBTW: jihadists have at least 37 training camps scattered across the USA. The count of 37 is from the feds, so they know about them. where is the DHS or at least the DOJ in destroying the camps rather than letting them train more people in the US as jihadist against this country. The DOJ, yes that is a reputable organization of the federal government -- LMBO.

The two examples presented in the "news article" related to racial profiling stated both examples were of US citizens and there was nothing mentioned about the people have latino language, color, or other features. So I can only conclude that these were not examples of profiling run amok. OBTW: when you fill out gov't forms for employment, benefits, etc. there is a question that asks if you are latino, or if you are white not latino. So what is the US government concern about racial profiling when they do it everyday and allow it to be tracked on their forms and therefore into their files and YOUR federal file all day and night long. When I grew up we called this hypocrisy. Also by doing this they can pick and choose the distribution of benefits the person qualifies for based on race, gender, or ethnicity which I thought was unlawful for any private business to do. So we end up back at the Novel Animal Farm which was supposed to be a parody of the former Soviet Union but might well fit the USA government at this time. The most famous quote, I believe, to come out of this novel was where the pigs who had managed to gain control of the farm and the other animals through voting manipulation were explaining to the other animals about leadership and equality. The pigs put it this way: All of the animals are equal, however some (pigs) are more equal than others. Seems to me that is what we have today. A government of more equal than others citizens, congress, law enforcement, races, and finally more equal than people who put their lives on the line for this country while the pigs, just like in the novel, did not.

What is particularly funny, if this were not so serious, is that the DOJ is speaking ill of Sheriff Joe for racial profiling. The humor in this is that the Obama administration has done little but racial profiling in it's time in existence. The DOJ sent community support personnel to help organize protests against the Trayvon Martin shooting and also the Michael Brown shooting. Both people shot were black both shooters were white. Unfortunately the reverse is not true. about 1 1/2 weeks after the ferguson riots a black officer shot an unarmed white male but where was the federal agents to investigate this. no where to be found. maybe they were all in ferguson, MO or still working on the Martin case from years ago in Florida. Who knows, but do you now understand the irony in this report?

Looks like Joe is just doing his job, plane and simple, which is more then I can say for most, but as we all know, if you speak out about the government, they will do whatever they have to, to try and shut you up, or put you six feet under. Everyone is afraid to say whats on their minds for fear of being called a racist, its got NOTHING to do with the color of anyones skin, but the fact that they broke the law to come here, and while here continue to break the law, and as long as our own government protects them it will only get worse.

Sounds to me like Joe is doing his job efficiently if these illegal’s come into this country maybe they should learn to speak English more fluently, maybe we need to get rid of Thomas Perez along with Eric holder

Why won't this lousy BIRTHER issue just DIE& go away? It wont go away becauseit's TRUE- Birthers are smeared as kooks & RACISTS- but in fact 17 topForensic Documenrt specialist (used in court to verify documents) have alldeclared the (ADOBE-PDF) birth certificate Obama released on April 27th to be ablatant FORGERY- GOOGLE "MARA ZEBEST" (who has written dozens ofADOBE software books) Hear her stake her reputation that the birth certificateis an absolute FORGERY (a cut & paste composit that was created on acomputer) Bottom line is "OBAMA is a FRAUD who has deceived America"Have you ever read one word about MARA or any other specialist or lawsuit inthe newspaper? (of course you haven't) Have you ever wondered why? More than 30lawsuits have been secretly dismissed in court about Obama’s birth certificate& multiple SSN's used in real estate scams- recently (in the 9th circuitcourt) Judge Lamberth dismissed the lawsuit against his multiple SSN's saying"Obama probably obtained the SSN's illegally but his right to privacytrumps all" This means that Obama does not have to obey the same laws thatyou & I do- He is above the law- and 2 months ago in Georgia a defaultjudgment went against Obama to disallow him on the 2012 ballot in Georgia- butit was later reversed because of behind the scenes politics- and a week later a5+ billion dollar contract to build a nuclear power plant was granted toGeorgia by the government-

Very Urgent News Alert:Since when is the mass exodus of the citizens of one country to another country considered "undocumented migrants" instead of occupation of the country. When the Hitler invaded Poland, I don't beleive they were called the Germans "undocumented migrants". Do you?Ask Gustavo Arellano when will the illegal Mexican occupation of the United States of America end?

Joe supporters are SO retarded...We have Americans speaking English o tourists speaking any other language in central America, Mexico ALL the time...do we feel offended because they were speaking a language we don't understand?? NO because whatever they were talking about to each other was nothing of our damn business!! We usually will ask where they from in a friendly way, maybe ask how you said something in their native language "como se dice Gracias??... I came to the conclusion that when somebody feel offended about people speaking in a foreign language is because they believe they are speaking shit on their backs and usually they are people of low self-esteem "the world is against me" kind of attitude. Anyway, if you really want to overhear what the other people are talking about, just take some Spanish classes and then you'll understand our conversations about what we give our wives/husbands for Christmas, or how we fight with our toddler to make him brush their teeth...We are not plotting the next 9/11 for Pete's Sake!!!!

This man's dark, dirty soul has dirtied this land long enough. How about some common sense, elect someone new (who is not a crook/criminal) and lift the curse on this shithole. What a change there might be, finally a chance for optimism. The crooks (Arpaio and his lot), turned this community into and kept it a sewer. Many people should be screaming for justice. Since the crook has broke his oath to the People and the Constitution, he (and all the rest, ie, corrupt judges, attorneys and politicians in Arizona) is/are therefore illegitimate.

I'm i the only one that has noticed how utterly ridiculous the left is when it comes to exaggerating things or people they disagree with. Their agenda is open borders, the Sheriffs is to protect open borders. That is what this is all about. Even ICE found the charges empty.

Mr. Thomas Perez is involved in La Raza, is he not? Conflict of interest, maybe. A failure to communicate (cool hand luke) with the greater American public therefore? Mr. Perez should recuse himself in the interests of an objective investigation.

What would you expect from a hispanic Attorney General? He wants all his goombas crossing over the border. More votes for his socialist party agenda. We need to clean out the riff-raff coming into this country illegally. We need to bring back the "Ellis Island" process where people were screened when they came into this country. No trade, no enter. Poor health, no enter. No sponsor, no enter. Now, our welfare roles are filling up with unemployed, uneducated, dishonest hispanics and blacks that are milking the system dry. We taxpayers are paying the price. Too bad if the truth hurts. Go Sheriff Joe.

Exactly what the people in Arizona deserve. First you allow a right to work state where minimum wage workers pay the taxes for their corporate masters. Then you allow your governor to step all over your medical marijuana laws, and round it off by allowing the facist police state that none other than Arizona will tolerate.

I Can't imagine calling the Police department in San Salvador....Hello, I hear some gringos speaking English in the Boulevard, Please go to investigate...The first thing they will ask me is what they were talking about, if I said i don't understand but I feel Offended or suspicious, they will hag up on me; or most likely they will tell me to stop being stupid, that they have more important thing to do that harass gringos just because i feel offended followed with something like "Adios Pendejo"...If a third world country understand this; why MCSO doesn't?

The carpetbaggers, as far as the American citizen public is concerned, are the foreign nationals, illegaly in this nation, no matter where they illegaly came from. See Americans are equal opportunity deporters, where people that violate their laws go.

Isn't Mr. Perez a member of La Raza? Conflict of interest maybe? He should immediately recuse himself in order to allow an objective investigation. Uh, I'm sorry, Objective? I suddenly forgot this is the Obama, Arizona suing administration.

Gringo's don't go around talking about retaking certain nations, especially if many are in those nations ILLEGALY!! Gringos who live in Mexico are very respectfull of that nation, they have to be because unlike this nation that has become so corrupt, Mexico would kick their asses out and rightly so.